A contagious , cancer of the blood - like cancer is spreading among several mintage of cockle , clams , and mussel . It ’s known as disseminated neoplasia , and according to a newNaturestudy , it appear to be directly transmitted between unlike species of marine bivalves – likely through the water .
Most Crab arise from change and mutations that accumulate in the genome of cells over clip . And while cancer cells can migrate , or metastasise , they usually remain in that one individual . Until of late , we only knew of two examples of communicable malignant neoplastic disease in the wild : a genital tumor that affects dogs and theTasmanian devil facial neoplasm disease . Last year , researcher studyingsoft - cuticle clams(Mya arenaria ) along the US east coast found that cancerous tumor cells are being pop off from one dollar bill to another . That discovery show that hereditary cancers could be far more far-flung than we think .
To see if cancers in other bivalves are cause by independent mobile phone , a squad lead by Columbia University ’s Stephen Goff collected mussels ( Mytilus trossulus , pictured above ) , cockle ( Cerastoderma edule , below left ) , and golden carpet shell clams ( Polititapes aureus , below right ) from several location in British Columbia , Canada , and the Galician Coast in Spain . The team screened the specimens for neoplasia after taking sample of haemolymph , their blood - like lively fluid , and they conduct genetic analyses of the server and malignant neoplastic disease tissues .
They found that , not only is the Crab spreading among individuals of the same species , it ’s also being passed between dissimilar mollusk specie . Neoplasias in all three specie were due to clones of communicable cancer cells that were genetically distinct from their host . But while the malignant neoplastic disease blood in mussels and cockle were derive from their respective mintage , the cancer cells in the golden carpet shell bread showed no genetic match to the species : The contagious cells originated in a unlike clam species endure in the same area calledVenerupis corrugata . The cancer had undergo grumpy - species transmission .
It remains unreadable exactly how the Cancer the Crab circulate . But because these filter - give invertebrate do n’t really move , the cancer cells are probable drift in the seawater .
Cockles ( forget ) and prosperous carpet shell clams ( right ) collect in the ria of Arousa in Galicia , Spain . David Iglesias
